‘Not if I had anything to do with it.’
Rej was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Was your family here in Warsaw during the war?’
She nodded.
‘Do you have any idea if your father or your mother was involved in the Home Army?’
‘Both. My father wouldn’t talk about it, but my mother used to tell me stories about it when I was small. She was a courier during the Uprising... you know, carrying messages from the Old Town to Srodmiescie, the city centre. Lots of her friends died in the sewers, but somehow she always managed to find her way through. They used to call her Little Rat because she knew her way around the sewers so well.’
‘You don’t know what your father did?’
The manageress shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. Not sentimental tears, but tears of frustration, and regret. ‘He wouldn’t talk about it. He fought with Colonel Karol Ziemski, in Zoliborz, that’s all he said.’
Rej took hold of her hands, which were surprisingly elegant and long-fingered. She could have been a pianist, rather than a slicer of sausages.
‘He never told you anything else?’
‘No. He said it was all too terrible. He wanted to forget.’
Rej put his arms around her and hugged her. He didn’t know what Nadkomisarz Dembek would have thought, if he had seen him like this, but he didn’t care. The manageress had lost her sister and Rej had lost Matejko; and both of them had been victims of the same madness. Sometimes Rej despaired, and thought that Poland would never escape from violence and lunacy, both her own and that of her neighbours. The only answer was affection; and consideration; and sharing the pain.
He missed the comradeship of communism, no matter how restrictive it might have been. He missed the bureaucracy, and the predictability, and the feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood.
The manageress wept on his shoulder, and made a damp patch on his brown checkered shirt. ‘Why did it have to happen to her?’ she repeated, over and over again.
Rej didn’t answer: because he wasn’t so sure that it wouldn’t happen to her, too.
An hour later he was sitting in a cramped apartment in Wola, only two blocks away from the corner of Gorczewska and Zagloby Streets. It was here, in 1944, that the Germans had taken three hundred patients and staff from Wolski Hospital and shot them, all of them.
He was drinking tea and trying, politely, to eat poppyseed cake, although he hated poppyseed cake and he wasn’t at all hungry. Poppyseeds always lodged in his teeth, and he had nightmares about interviewing homicide suspects with little black specks between his incisors. The room was airless and over-furnished. A polished sideboard was crammed with ruby-coloured brandy glasses and silver-plated coasters and plastic figures of the Virgin Mary. Mrs Slesinska was fussing and weeping, taking off her glasses again and again to wipe her eyes. She was a small, fraught woman with tightly-permed hair and freckles everywhere, as if somebody had sprinkled her with cinnamon. She never stopped talking and tutting and brushing her skirt. She had even brushed the dandruff from Rej’s collar, the moment he had stepped into the room. He supposed, gloomily, that she was missing her husband very badly, but that nobody had counselled her. Nobody had tried to help.
On the wall above the sideboard were five large black-and- white photographs, arranged in a star shape. All of them showed a smiling, balding man in his mid-fifties, with a large nose and a heavy chin, and eyes that were bright with simplicity.
‘I need to ask you something about Bronislaw,’ said Rej.
‘Bronislaw never did one thing wrong, in the whole of his life. Sometimes I wish that he had. But he was such a saint. He was a choirboy at St Lawrence’s, and that’s where we met; and we were married at St Lawrence’s when I was seventeen, and we had eight children. Eight! But it would have been nine, if little Darek hadn’t died.’
‘I’m sure he was a very good man,’ Rej reassured her.
‘Once his supervisor accused him of throwing letters away, so that he wouldn’t have to deliver them. You haven’t come about that, have you? It wasn’t true. He treated the mail like his sacred duty.’
‘I’m sure he did. I expect somebody was trying to cover up for their own inefficiency. They lose letters all the time; or steal them if they look as if they’ve got money in them. You know that.’
‘Bronislaw never stole anything. He was a saint.’
Rej said, ‘Tell me about his parents.’
‘His parents? I don’t know anything about his parents. His father was a welder, I think. I don’t know what his mother did. She came from Lublin, I think. They both died about two years after we were married. They were quite old, you see. Bronislaw was an accident.’
‘You don’t happen to know what his parents did, during the war?’
Mrs Slesinska noisily blew her nose. ‘Bronislaw never talked about them. He didn’t talk much about anything. He liked his peace and quiet. Please – eat your poppy-cake.’
Rej took the smallest bite he possibly could, and sat chewing for a while, his tongue hunting into every crevice of his teeth. ‘Would anybody know what his parents did, during the war?’
‘Well, of course Staszek.’
‘Who’s Staszek?’
‘His older brother. He had two older brothers and one older sister. The sister and the other brother, they’re both dead now, but Staszek’s still alive. He lives in the Iron Gate housing estate. I can tell you what he did in the war. Bronislaw was very proud of him. Staszek fought against the Germans, during the Uprising. He helped to capture the railway headquarters, something like that. Bronislaw always used to say that Staszek was a real Pole.’
Rej leaned forward. ‘So Staszek fought with the insurgents?’
‘That’s right. Do you want to see a picture of him? I have one somewhere. We took it when we went on holiday to Italy. That was two years ago. I didn’t like the Italians. In the hotel they shouted at us because we brought all our own food. What’s wrong with that? Not everybody’s a millionaire.’
‘Don’t worry about the picture,’ said Rej, standing up. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’
Mrs Slesinska looked up at him, her face pinched. ‘It’s more than I can bear, you know, losing Bronislaw like that.’
‘I promise you... we’re doing our best to find out who did it.’
‘I had to bury his body, without his head, that was what made it so terrible. It’s just as if I haven’t been able to bury him at all.’
Rej laid a hand on her shoulder, almost as if he were giving her benediction. ‘Maybe when we find out who did it, we’ll be able to put him to rest.’
But as he stepped out into the street, and lit up a cigarette, he was already beginning to doubt that he could find out who or what the Executioner was – and, even if he could, that he would be able to catch him. The Executioner was beginning to sound more and more like Brzezicki’s devil, who pursued every last member of a man’s family in its hunger for revenge.
That afternoon, he managed to make two more calls – to the travel guide’s offices at the airport, and to the clinic on the outskirts of Ochota where the ear-nose-and-throat doctor had practised. None of the travel guide’s colleagues knew anything about his family or his past, although they believed he had a sister living in Poznan. But the garrulous old receptionist at the clinic knew everything about her late employer, even down to his shoe size (‘he used to ask me to buy him socks... he was always too busy to buy his own socks’).
She also knew that, as a boy, he had been a courier for ‘Radoslaw’ – the nom-de-guerre of colonel Jan Mazurkiewicz – when the Germans began to force the Warsaw insurgents back into the Old Town in a fierce fighting retreat.
‘He didn’t talk about it very often... just now and then, at the end of the week’s work, when we were clearing up. He had a bottle of cherry vodka in his desk and we’d have a glass each.’
‘Can you remember anything he told you?’
‘Some of it. I think he said he was fourteen, in 1944. He said th
at what he did was so dangerous that after the war he went freezing cold just thinking about it, he’d sit and shiver for hours, worse than catching the flu. At the time, though, he was so young and so cocky that he wasn’t frightened. The only thing was, he fell in love with a girl. She was a courier, too. I don’t remember what her name was, although he did tell me. When the insurgents finally surrendered, he took off his Home Army armband and pretended that he was just another civilian. But this girl kept her armband on, like a lot of them did, and the Germans sent her off to a concentration camp. He never saw her again. But he said he had never loved anybody, before or since, as much as he had loved her.’
‘You’re very kind,’ Rej told her.
‘It’s nothing,’ said the receptionist. ‘In any case, haven’t you caught him? It’s in the paper this morning.’
‘We’ve caught somebody,’ said Rej.
‘Somebody’s better than nobody, isn’t it?’
Rej looked away. ‘I’m not so sure about that.’
Outside, just as he was unlocking his car, the receptionist came bustling out after him. ‘Komisarz, I’ve remembered!’
‘What have you remembered?’
‘The girl’s name. The girl that he fell in love with. Her name was Ewelina!’
Back at police headquarters, the atmosphere was feverish and festive, and Rej had to push his way through a crowd of press and television reporters. He had almost reached the doors when he was dazzled by a camera-light, and Anna Pronaszka elbowed her way through the crowd towards him.
‘Well, komisarz? How do you feel now that the Executioner has been arrested?’
‘We don’t yet know if he is the Executioner. If he is – well, of course, I’ll be delighted.’
‘Sour grapes, komisarz?’
‘Realism, Ms Pronaszka.’
Inside, the building bustled. Rej made his way to his office through hurrying police officers and excited secretaries; and everywhere phones were ringing and people were shouting.
Nadkomisarz Dembek had just announced that the President himself had sent them a message of congratulation (although some of the officers had responded to this news by blowing loud and extended raspberries). Roman Zboinski and his associates had already been formally charged with murder, conspiracy, kidnap, fraud and the possession of illegal firearms and stolen goods. They had all denied it: in fact the man whom Ruba had identified as the man who had abducted Antoni Dlubak in the Saxony Gardens had claimed that he was in Budapest at the time, visiting his cousins.
But all that Nadkomisarz Dembek wanted was Roman Zboinski’s head on a plate, and he said so, again and again, on national television.
Rej reached his office and stood for a long time staring at Matejko’s empty desk. Matejko’s scribbled notes were still there. His coffee mug was still there. In a small glass bottle, a pink rose had shed the last of its petals. Matejko’s wife had given it to him to take to work.
Jarczyk came in, with a bottle of beer in his hand. ‘Stefan! We’re celebrating! Do you want some?’
He saw what Rej was looking at, and put the bottle down. ‘I’m sorry. Jerzy was one of the best. We’re having a collection for his wife and kid.’
There were all kinds of corrosive remarks that Rej could have made to him then. But until he knew more about the Executioner, he didn’t want to fall out with anybody at police headquarters, not even Dembek, and so he bit his lip and said nothing at all.
‘Even the President sent us a message,’ said Jarczyk. ‘Come on, Stefan... it was just one of those things. It could have been you. It happened to be me.’
‘I suppose so,’ Rej replied, in a voice that wasn’t much more than a whisper. ‘By the way, did he finish searching the sewers?’
‘They searched up to a point, but they didn’t find anything significant.’
‘What do you mean, up to a point?’
‘It isn’t easy, you know. Those sewers are like a maze. And who knows what you might come up against.’
Rej held up his little finger, still protected by a bandage and a plastic finger-stall. ‘Been there, Jarczyk. Done it. Got the stump to prove it.’
‘I’m sorry, Stefan. I’m sorry that Dembek took you off the case and I’m sorry about Jerzy. But you mustn’t put too much of a damper on things. We’ve scored a big success here, and most of the groundwork was yours. You’ve got to take some of the credit, too.’
‘That’s all right, Jarczyk. The credit’s all yours. Now... do you know how far Jerzy managed to search?’
‘What does it matter? It’s over. We’ve got three witnesses and all the forensic evidence we need.’
‘For Dlubak’s murder, maybe.’
‘So long as they give Zboinski one life sentence, that’s enough for me.’
Rej said, ‘Do we yet have any evidence at all that could connect Dlubak’s murder to any of the rest of the Executioner’s murders?’
Jarczyk counted on his fingers. ‘Number one, method. Their heads were all chopped off. Number two, motive, which I’m working on. Kaminski and Dlubak were both investigating Zboinski’s money-laundering operation, so it’s obvious why he went for them. And I’ve found out that the mailman Slesinski worked in the sorting department which dealt with Zboinski’s postal district. Apparently he was accused of stealing mail... which means that he could have taken something valuable which Zboinski wanted back.’
‘That’s a bit tendentious, isn’t it?’ Rej interrupted. ‘What about the girl from the grocery store? Did she give Zboinski some out-of-date sausage? And how about the travel guide? Maybe he gave Zboinski the wrong directions. And Ewa Zborowska? And all those German workers?’
‘As I say,’ said Jarczyk, testily, ‘I’m working on it.’
‘All right, then,’ said Rej, tiredly rubbing his eyes. ‘You work on it. Meanwhile, did Jerzy leave any kind of map of the sewers, to show how far he’d got?’
‘It’s in my office,’ said Jarczyk. ‘But as far as I remember, he didn’t get much further than Zurawia in the south and Zelazna in the west. Only a dozen square blocks.’
‘How about forensics? Anything more from Dr Wojniakowski?’
‘Yes... the sharp instrument that was used to torture Antoni Dlubak was definitely the baling hook that we found in Roman Zboinski’s kitchen.’
Dembek came in, and said, ‘Stefan! You haven’t got a beer!’
Rej said, ‘That’s all right, Artur. I’m not staying. I think I need something stronger.’
To help her find her way to see Jan Kaminski’s girlfriend in Mokotow, Sarah’s secretary Irena had drawn her a dramatic map covered in instructions such as Turn Right Here!!! and Don’t Go This Way!!! but Sarah still managed to get lost three times. In the end she had to ask directions from a weather-beaten old man with white bristles and scarcely any teeth, who told her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, and would she like to come to bed with him for an hour or two?
Hanna Peszka lived in a large family apartment with a balcony overlooking a quiet, well-tended garden. Although it was past seven o’clock, the evening was still oppressively warm, and all the windows were open, so that they could hear the traffic. Hanna’s father wasn’t yet back from work but her mother was in the kitchen making a cucumber salad. One of her brothers was in his bedroom laboriously practising ‘Satisfaction’ on the guitar. Hanna took Sarah into the living-room and they sat side by side on a huge couch upholstered in red brocade, next to a grotesque porcelain planter filled with pink-dyed feather-grass.
Hanna was a mousy blonde, shy and thin-wristed but deceptively attractive. The dark circles under her eyes showed how much she was still suffering from the shock of her boyfriend’s murder. She spoke in quiet, quick whispers, and only occasionally looked up.
‘You’re not a policewoman, are you?’ she asked.
‘Well, no... but Komisarz Rej asked me to talk to you. He thought you might find it easier.’
‘I still can’t believe Jan’s gone. It’s
funny, isn’t it? I keep looking at the phone and wondering whether I ought to call him.’
‘It’s going to take you a long time to get over that.’
‘Do you want tea, or coffee?’ asked Hanna. ‘I don’t really know what to say to you now. They’ve caught him, haven’t they, the man who killed Jan, and all those other people?’
Sarah gave her a reassuring smile. ‘They think so, yes.’
Hanna was clutching a folder of papers in her hands. ‘Jan left these here... he didn’t like leaving his papers at the radio station because people used to pry through his desk. I had a look at them, after he died. I don’t know whether they might help you. You see here –’ she licked her thumb and leafed through four or five sheets ‘– he mentions this man Zboinski again and again. I can’t understand all of it, but it looks as though Zboinski was using Vistula Kredytowy to help him sell his stolen cars.’
‘Could I see that?’ asked Sarah; and Hanna passed it over. The first few pages were nothing but rough, scribbled notes that Jan Kaminski had made while he was preparing his investigation into the way that Senate’s contingency account had been used to launder money from Zboinski’s car business in Gdansk. But the meaning was very clear. Zboinski stole luxury cars in France and Germany and Britain, Senate Hotels ‘bought’ them as anything from ‘courtesy cars’ to ‘kitchen ranges’ to ‘air-conditioning equipment’, and then ‘sold’ them as surplus or damaged goods to a bewildering variety of salvage companies, some in Bulgaria, some in the Czech Republic, some in Romania. The huge losses they sustained were written off, but in fact they weren’t losses at all. They were Zboinski’s profits, which seemed to have run into well over $3.5 million.
But it was the second-to-last page that caught Sarah’s attention more than anything else. A bald, pencil-written memo that read: ‘A senior Senate executive must be involved, because Antoni Dlubak says that all of these transactions need top-level authorization. Sarah Leonard? Possibly, because she speaks flawless Polish and has v. good contacts in Warsaw. But Dlubak seems to think it was somebody higher up, in New York. Also that odd fax re the Senate contingency account that was sent to Jacek Studnicki but given to Antoni Dlubak in error.’
The Chosen Child Page 23
